When we substitute a philosophic truth for politics, as I observed in yesterday’s post on the new political correctness, both truth and politics are compromised, and in extreme form, totalitarian culture prevails. On the other hand, factual truth is the ground upon which a sound politics is based. As Hannah Arendt underscores, “the politically most relevant truths are factual.” That Trotsky could be air brushed out of the history of the Bolshevik revolution, contrary to the factual truth that he was a key figure, commander of the Red Army, second only to Lenin, is definitive of the totalitarian condition. I know we haven’t gotten to this point, but there are worrying tendencies.
Fact denial seems to be the order of the day, from fictoids of varying degrees of absurdity (Obama the Kenyan post-colonial philosopher and the like), to denial of scientific findings: including evolution, climate change and basic economics. (I can’t get over the fact that it seems to be official Republican Party policy that cutting taxes doesn’t increase deficits.)
The political consequences of denying the truth of facts are linked with the substitution of truth for politics. In order to make the contrast between the two different types of truth and their relationship with politics clear, Arendt reflects upon the beginning of WWI. The causes of the war are open to interpretation. The aggressive intentions of Axis or the Allies can be emphasized, as can the intentional or the unanticipated consequences of political alliances. The state of capitalism and imperialism in crisis may be understood as being central. Yet, when it comes to the border of Belgium, it is factually the case that Germany invaded Belgium and not the other way around. A free politics cannot be based on an imposed interpretation. There must be an openness to opposing views. But a free politics also cannot be based on a factual lie, such as the proposition that Belgium’s invasion of Germany opened WWI.
Arendt observes how Trotsky expressed his fealty to the truth of the Communist Party, in The Origins of Totalitarianism. And, in her classic essay, “Truth and Politics,” she notes his tragic fate: eliminated from Soviet history books and then assassinated. The assassination followed the lie.
I am concerned that our politics are more and more becoming involved in this sort of vicious circle. Fictoids are the least of our problems. If we politically debate energy and transportation policy with one side denying the facts of climate change, to take the prime example, the debate will not yield consequential compromise and consensus, we will not be able to act effectively. We will be ill prepared to politically respond to the very real economic challenges of the future, and our capacities to address a central global problem will all but disappear.
Other nations free of know nothing politics will be working to adapt to the changes that are forthcoming. They will have new energy industries and high speed rail systems, while the United States will decay. But since the United States has the largest economy, by far, our gas guzzling pollution machine could bring the whole world down with us. It’s time to face facts.
Facts are a pretty minimal threshold here. There are lots of fact checking entities out there doing what they do. But good propaganda rarely involves outright falsehoods. It is too easy to be caught out in a lie. The real threat, I think, is what Harry Frankfurt calls “Bullshit” – interactions in which the speakers are not even playing the game of truth and falsity. They are ignoring those categories pretty much altogether.
So when Obama claims that he is centrist and that he has attained bi-partisan consensus on some issue, he is not lying. He is a centrist. But he has ignored the causal story behind his location – namely that the right has run hard and fast to the right and the ‘liberals’ have shifted rightward apace. Hence the new center is the old conservatism on many matters.
And causes, of course, are not ‘facts’ in any obvious sense – at least not in the sense that the American media use that word. A cause is a theoretical entity. What American politics (and e.g., British, too) lack is theories (interpretations) about what generates the ‘facts’ that people then throw around.
Nothing new in that claim: read the opening paragraph of Dewey’s The Public and Its Problems.
[…] close attention to the relationship between words and deeds applies as well to the persistent problem of fictoids in our public life, as we discussed last year. Little tales that confirm preconceived notions of […]
[…] Future. I have already reflected on these two sides of the problem in earlier posts. I showed how factual truth, as it provides the ground upon which a sound political life develops, is under attack in the age […]
“Other nations free of know nothing politics will be working to adapt to the changes that are forthcoming. They will have new energy industries and high speed rail systems, while the United States will decay. But since the United States has the largest economy, by far, our gas guzzling pollution machine could bring the whole world down with us. It’s time to face facts.”
This strikes me as naive. Surely what is unfolding before our very eyes is the very Keynes-inspired welfare state the countries of Western Europe have long-touted as the model for all others emulate. I don’t see any mention in your analysis of how capitalism has played in this “fictoid” on you’ve elaborated. These “nations free of know nothing politics” are adjusting, just not to benefit the broad masses, but squeeze them of every benefit and pension check earned in order to stabilize their economies. Thus is the nature of austerity: it hasn’t led any country to adapt to changes in a positive direction in the slightest. That is why at present Belgian firefighters are hosing down a hostile police force bent on breaking a general strike. Or why in Greece, the police union has symbolically threatened to arrest any member of the Troika (IMF-EU-ECB) if they set foot in the country.
To think that the present economic crisis is Keynes provoked is convenient but belied by the facts. Specifics matter. The terms of the economic union and the common currency of Europe were hopeful but unrealistic. Those chicken have come home to roost. It had little or nothing to do with the fundamental questions concerning the relationship between the state and the economy, i.e. free market v. social market models. And do please note that the German and much of Northern Europe are doing much better than the US in the present economic crisis, with their very substantial welfare states.
But if we deny science, we are doomed, Not only do Europe and Asia pose a challenge; our own past built on the advances in science and technology of the industrial age warn us about this. The best scientific evidence indicates that climate change is very real and caused by humans. To make this a partisan issue is to doom our country and perhaps the species. Evolution is a key theoretical proposition of the biological sciences, to not teach our children this, is to doom them to ignorance.
[…] essay on truth and politics highlights the depth of the problem, as I have already reflected on here and here. Confusing political opinion with political truth and empowering that truth is a primary […]
[…] pail in comparison to the importance of basing our political life on factual truths, (as I analyzed here) instead of convenient fictions (fictoids), and on careful principled (of the left and the right) […]